I made another half-gallon batch of this today using bread yeast instead of champagne yeast. I'll find out in a couple of days if the type of yeast has any impact on the taste. You cannot use bread yeast when making hard apple cider, for example, unless you want your cider to taste like apple bread.
From the first batch, the first liter was drunk 2 days after I transferred the brew from the 1-gallon jug to the two 1-liter glass bottles. It was sweet and had a very strong ginger kick to it. The best part was the carbonation. Nice and fizzy. The second bottle was drunk a week after racking and it wasn't as sweet. It had some carbonation and it might have bordered on being slightly alcoholic. Nonetheless it's a fun experiment.